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Recruitment pressures meant that the official minimum height of 5ft 3in was often disregarded and it is believed the data is fairly representative of the generation as a whole.

Information about on the men’s childhood taken from the 1901 census helped explain why modern man is four inches taller, on average.

It is thought that nutrition and hygiene, improvements in water supply and sewage disposal, changes in housing, including the clearing of slums and the reduction in overcrowding all played a role.

Fascinatingly, family size mattered, with recruits shorter the more siblings they had. For example, men with six brothers and sisters were half an inch shorter than those with just one.

It is thought that children in large, overcrowded households suffered from lack of food and exposure to infection.

Data: Researchers used First World War records to obtain the adult height of soldiers born in the 1890s

In contrast, coming from a family with a high socio-economic status added about half an inch to height.

But home-life was not the most important factor.

The study, presented at the Economic History Society’s annual conference found the conditions in the neighbourhood the men grew up in, including child death rates, to have the biggest impact on height.

The two key ingredients of growth during childhood are nutrition, which builds bone and tissue, and disease, which hinders it.

High infant death rates are seen as a sign of disease being rife, overcrowding and toxic heavy industry.

Bearing this out, the professor found that the men who grew up in the least healthy districts were an inch shorter than those from the healthiest areas.

A childhood in an area with high rates of illiteracy among young women stunted growth – perhaps because as mothers, they had less access to information about nutrition and hygiene.

London slums in 1925. It is thought that nutrition and hygiene, improvements in water supply and sewage disposal, changes in housing, including the clearing of slums and the reduction in overcrowding all played a role

While advances in medicine are usually assumed to go hand-in-hand with improved living standards, Professor Hatton doesn’t think they are hugely important in this case.

This is because most of the improvements, including routine use of antibiotics, didn’t occur until the second half of the century – long after the growth spurt begun.